Steampunk?

[meganbmoore]

 Watching Last Exile made me realize that, though I dislike most mecha, I like most steampunk that I've encountered(I think Steamboy is the only exception, off the top of my head...there are likely others if I think about it, though...I just try not to dwell on things I don't care for) but don't seem to run across it a lot, even though I know there's a lot out there..

Anyone want to rec me steampunk or gaslight romances, be they anime, manga or books?  (And tell me if it's available in the US) 

ETA:  wikipedia's page on steampunk 

ETA 2: crumpeteerhas posted very, very brief descriptions of the various "punk" genres here.

Comments

[calixa.livejournal.com]

What's steampunk/gaslight?

I am out of Deer Man episodes. Woe.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I would put Escaflowne (the anime) in the steampunk category.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

You can't go wrong by going back to the basics: H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the pulps.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just realized that Tin Man is actually steampunk.

The Vesuvius Club and The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss are both pretty good if you don't mind a main character who you rather want to slap upside the head sometimes (the main character reminds me of Jack Harkness in the "sleep with anything that moves" way).

The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling is good. I understand Anno Dracula by Kim Newman is pretty good.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Are you already reading Mike Mignola -- Hellboy, B.P.R.D.? They're not strictly steampunk as a whole, but steampunk elements crop up a lot and they're just grand pulpy fun. (Ironwolf is more properly steampunk, though it didn't click so well with me for some reason; and he was involved in the art design on Disney's "Atlantis" -- he really keeps coming back to those steampunky images)

Miyazaki's Laputa is another classic, and the Moorcock Oswald Bastable books mentioned in the Wiki article were early favorites of mine and in retrospect my first exposure to anything steampunky, although they're rather slight, more memorable for the odd tech and alternate-history angles rather than the characters. Paul di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy (http://www.amazon.com/Steampunk-Trilogy-Paul-Di-Filippo/dp/1568581025) is pretty good, and Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age), while more of a cyberpunk SF, has almost a steampunky feel to much of it due to one culture's use of modern high technology to live out a sort of odd recreation of Victorian society -- fun, although it suffers from Stephenson's usual problem of not being able to write decent endings.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

Girl Genius, Larklight, Howl's Moving Castle, Five Fists of Science, Back to the Future III, The Golden Compass, The Amazing Screw-on Head, LoEG, Ruse, and Hollow Fields are all quite awesome. All are available in the US.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, and before I forget -- one recurring source of humor in Pratchett is a sort of comic-fantasy angle on steampunk, in which some blend of alchemy and magic is used to recreate technological items you'd not expect in a fantasy setting. This sort of thing is sprinkled throughout all the books -- you see it from the very beginning, with foreign tourist Twoflower's "camera" (a box with a tiny magic imp sitting at an easel, painting very fast) -- but it tends to be particularly thick in the Industrial Revolution (http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-1-5.jpg) books.

[irenak.livejournal.com]

Someone already mentioned the original Jules Verne, so might as well throw out The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, the Canadian TV series. It was a bit uneven, but great fun. Wild, Wild West - either film or television series - could count as steampunk as well, but I don't know how keen you are on that particular environment versus a more urban one.

You can also try any number of Sherlock Holmes pastiches: the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries graphic novels take a sort of LXG approach, pitting Holmes against various Victorian-era characters.

Hope that helps!

[estara.livejournal.com]

How come no one has mentioned Sakura Wars yet? The TV Series and the OVAs and the Movie are all out in the US (no idea if they are available, though). Especially the first OVA is good. You get lots of bishies as enemies, too, for an added bonus, although the heart is a harem around Ookami, whom I actually don't mind winning girl's hearts.

*remembers buying DreamCast for this series and playing through episode 2 with the help of Koyama's translation of the gaming script*

I still have to see if I can find the rest of the scripts. I own four of the games for DreamCast now ^^.

[chomiji]

Don't forget the Martha Wells stuff!

And some have called Swordpoint (and presumably the better of its two sequels, The Privilege of the Sword, as well>) "Mannerpunk" (as in "Comedy of Manners").

And did you ever read the children's books by Joan Aiken that start with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase? By the time you get to the third book or so, they're showing steampunk-ish characteristics, and they're definitely early gaslight. (And one of my childhood heroines, Dido Twite, shows up in the second book.)